Bashiok on Cinematics, Belial, Magic Find, and more

Bashiok must be relieved to have those tedious weeks spent organizing the logistics of Blizzcon fansite visits in his past, since he’s leapt into the forums this morning with a flurry of replies.

A fan asked about the quality of the “cinematics” used for the Monk introduction movie. Bashiok clarified the technical issues involved:

Well … yeah, the class announcement trailers are done using nothing but in-game assets. They’re essentially Diablo III machinima if you want to classify it. And they’re effing amazing. Obviously they’re not the pre-rendered cinematics, but if anyone is even confused about that… then that’s pretty cool too actually.

Bashiok can you confirm the presence of in-game cutscenes or does that steal from the game as the previous character dialogues as seen in the first gameplay video and that have since been removed?

Bashiok: The reason why those close-up character dialogues with the animated portraits were removed was because it took you away from your character and the game. So I’d be really surprised if we had in-game cinematics, but … never say never.

Never.

In a related question, who was the Monk fighting in that trailer? In one of his Blizzcon interviews, Jay Wilson mentioned that Belial would be involved in events in Act Two. Bashiok says no.

The demonic enemy shown in the Monk trailer is a morlu caster, not Belial.

Click through for several more new posts from Bashiok, covering overpowered Monk skills, female Monks, and Magic Find.

Elsewhere, a fan who has never used the skill and knows only preliminary information about it lists a number of reasons the Monk’s Seven Sided Strike skill is overpowered. Bashiok doesn’t go into a long argument, but he does add a useful tidbit of info.

I’ll jump in real quick and just say that this ability in the demo cost a little less than half your mana pool, so you’re able to “spam” it exactly twice in a row if starting with full mana.

In another thread, a fan asks the question on everyone’s lips. Female Monk? Nun?

There will be a female monk. Women can be monks as well in eastern religions, of which the monk draws the majority of his influence. We’re obviously putting a western spin on it though and making it something specific for Sanctuary.

I can understand if the model is not ready that we do not get to see footage/screenshots of her… but what is the secret with concept? Is there anything special about her? That is what I do not get.

Bashiok: The female monk is still in the concepting stage, so we don’t have any final concepts to show.

Someone asks about Magic Find every time the topic of items in D3 comes up. Today is no exception.

There is indeed currently magicfind (MF) on items in Diablo III, as well as a temporary shrine buff. I think though it’s a system we’re just sort of dipping our toes into for the moment.

I don’t think it’s accurate to say or even guess that the inclusion of MF means the system will mirror that of Diablo II. We could easily set rules for affix combination, requirement, frequency, and strength to control how and where MF appears in the game.

We may decide that MF as a stat is a fun alternative and building sets purely to that end, similar to Diablo II, is what we want to do. Or, we could say that it should just be a fun affix and not something you could stack to meaningful amounts.

Putting things like MF, additional XP, additional gold, speed increase, etc. on items now and having them in the demo is really just begging for discussion so please do give some feedback.